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Jay Williams, assistant secretary of Commerce for Economic Development, will talk about what the U.S. Economic Development Administration is doing to create jobs and generate private investment in the nation's economically distressed communities.
October 31, 2014

Some of the Commerce Department's prime data will be easier for other agencies and the public to find, thanks to a collaboration with New York University. Their Governance Laboratory lists seven key areas for the agency to improve to make its data more valuable. Mark Doms is Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs. On In Depth with Francis Rose, he explained how the partnership got started, how it will work, and who wins.

You might be a dog on the Internet, but nobody can tell for sure. Confidence in who people say they are online is vital to a cyber secure future for government and industry. People at the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace have been working on this problem within the Commerce Department for a couple of years now. Jeremy Grant is senior executive advisor for Identity Management at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He joined Tom Temin on the Federal Drive to discuss some recent progress.

Jay Williams, assistant secretary of Commerce for Economic Development, will talk about what the U.S. Economic Development Administration is doing to create jobs and generate private investment in the nation's economically distressed communities.
September 12, 2014

The Patent and Trademark Office's challenges demonstrate the need for the government to modernize its rules defining what it means to perform work. Experts say PTO's challenges are part of the growing pains of telework.

A Senate bill would abolish the National Technical Information Service (NTIS), an agency that serves as a repository for government-funded scientific, technical, engineering and business-related information. But Jeff Neal says there is more to consider than just how the Internet has changed the storage and retrieval of information.

Among advocates of telework within the federal government, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is often seen as the gold standard. But over a period of about four years, one group of PTO employees -- mostly teleworkers -- literally got paid for doing nothing. And it wasn't a secret. Managers within the Patent Trial and Appeal Board even devised a special pay code for time when employees were on the clock but weren't working: "Other Time." Those findings are part of a new report from the Commerce Department Inspector General's office. Todd Zinzer is the Commerce IG; on In Depth with guest host Jared Serbu, he explained how widespread this problem was.

Secretary Penny Pritzker has big plans for all the data coming out of the Commerce Department's agencies. To lead this new open data strategy Commerce officials have created a new position. They're currently taking applications for a chief data officer. Bruce Andrews is acting deputy secretary of Commerce. He joined Tom Temin and Emily Kopp on the Federal Drive to explain what they're trying to accomplish.

An executive in the Patent and Trademark Office was found to have violated several federal laws when she used her position to get a relative's boyfriend a job in her agency. The inspector general of the Commerce Department investigated the matter after getting a tip from a whistleblower.

The Census Bureau is doing a good job following directions as it prepares for the 2020 census in the face of mandatory budget cuts the past two years. Todd Zinser is Inspector General of the Commerce Department. He's looking at how closely the Census Bureau is following its financial guidance for absorbing the cuts and preparing for 2020 and can still see some room to improve.